


How to pull a kite through a storm

by Hecate



Category: Dark Blue
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 22:38:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/602858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He should stop her. Doesn't. (Set after 2x02)</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to pull a kite through a storm

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Not mine, no money made.

One drink turns into the proposed three, the number getting higher after that. Carter isn't surprised because Alex - Alex isn't alright now, no matter how much she grins, daring him to down another drink.

He's been there before.

[He should stop her. Doesn't.]

She's smiling, another glass in her hand, her eyes too bright, and he wants her all over again. And he has never been good at impulse control.

She tastes of whiskey when he kisses her, she tastes bitter, her teeth against his lips. She's laughing.

"You're drunk," Carter says, his hands still on her hips.

"And you don't care," Alex answers, leaning in again.

She's right.

[She might be broken for now, but he has been ruined for years already.]

She moves differently beneath him this time, harder and sharper, and he knows this, swallows it. It's what she needs. He's willing to give it to her. In this moment, he's willing to give her so much more. 

He forgot how that feels.

She doesn't scream when she comes, doesn't moan. Her lips pressed together, her eyes shut; but she arches against him, hot body and slick skin. It's enough. It's more than he deserves and he holds on to it. Holds on to her. 

She sleeps soundly, no nightmares, nothing that wakes her. He watches, the wrong kind of guardian, and the night passes with car headlights dancing across the room.

[He wants to touch her while she dreams.]

In the morning, she stumbles into the shower without a word. Dresses without looking at him. She leaves without eating and when he arrives at work, she's a mask wearing a woman.

He can't touch her anymore.

Jaimie figures it out that day. She laughs at him in a hallway, shaking her head. "You better clean up this mess."

He almost asks her when she turned into him.

[She's right] 

Alex comes back from another therapy session with a hard smile on her face. 

"I'm okay," she tells him and he nods. She frowns, her hands opening and closing at her sides. 

"I will be," she finally continues, voice softer now.

"Yeah," he answers. He means it. She will be okay. But if she keeps on working with them, he doubts it will last forever. They're all broken in some way, some of them in more obvious ways than others, and she’ll end up just like them.

He pushes the thought away.

[He doesn't want her to leave.]

She saves him three weeks later, pulling the trigger once more, hitting their latest target in the stomach. The man collapses, his body hitting the pavement with a thud, and Carter's eyes are on her instead of the bleeding man.

For seconds, she's stands still. Then her hands are on her phone, calling an ambulance, and he moves to kick the target's gun away.

"Drinks?" He asks her after the ambulance, the briefing and her superior giving her hell. She nods, face tired, and they're silent during the car ride.

He leaves the bar alone that night.

[She walked away with a stranger.]

"Hi," he says the next day when she comes to work. Alex nods. 

"Had fun?" 

He expects her to be angry, she's still his boss after all, and he has no right to ask that question. But she isn't.

Alex just shrugs, his only answer.

When she walks past him, he reaches out, touches her shoulder. 

"Alex," he begins and stops. She doesn't wait for him to find the right words.

The room feels strangely empty without the tension between them to fill it up.

[He should have stopped her that night.]

She's a good agent, a good boss. That hasn't changed. But he has. He can't really remember the last time a woman made him feel this way, filled him up with lust and worry and the need to reach out and touch.

At least it's not love.

It's something much more complicated than that.

When another job goes haywire, a scared target and a gun at Alex' head, he realizes how complicated the thing between them truly is. He's angry, and he's stupid, and when Jaimie manages to distract the target everything inside of him fractures, hairlines running through his control.

His fist connects with soft flesh and hard bone, something shattering under the impact. There's a scream of pain, and there's someone trying to pull him away.

There's Alex, pushing him, shouting something. He goes still.

"I'm okay," she tells him. "I'm okay."

[She is. He isn't.]

It's just Alex and him, an empty room, darkness and silence. 

The rest of the team left hours ago, Jaimie giving him a look before closing the door behind her, Dean's eyes on Jaimie. He thinks he should tell them that he knows, maybe tell them that it's okay. Even if it isn't. Even if it can only end in pain.

He doesn't know why Alex is still there, why she isn't at home, far away from people pointing guns at her. Away from the insanity of this job, this world. He imagines, briefly, what her apartment looks like. Safe, he thinks, warm colours and windows that let in the light.

"Carter," she says and he looks at her. She’s beautiful. But he knew that already. "Are you alright?"

He shrugs, nods. She probably knows it's a lie. 

"I get it," Alex finally says and he remembers the evening weeks ago when he said the very same words.

"Wanna go get a drink?" He asks her. "Or three?"

She laughs.

[That night, she walks away with him.]


End file.
